In part due to the global recession skiing holiday sales went down this winter.
Despite of excellent early on bookings and superb snow fall.
This fall in vacationers comes after 7 seasons of continuous growth within the ski industry, and the number of holidaymakers fell from 1.25. 1.3 million in 2008/9 to 950000 last year.
This is in part due to vacationers giving their annual skiing vacation a miss, while other vacationers who’d usually have two or more skiing breaks, just had one.
A fall of 15% was experienced by the independent travel sector with several budget airlines slashing the number of routes to several cities.
Some tour operators saw their reservations going down by 15%.
Nevertheless, the top tour operators share continued at 70% and France remained the favorite holiday destination with about 37% of skiing holidays.
Because of this a lot of operators cut down the number of luxury ski chalets they rent this year.
Catered ski chalets in particular are going to see a reduction in holiday makers as a catered ski chalet costs more with regards to chefs and hosts and lease if it is not sold.
Therefore it is unlikely that we will benefit from the last minute deals which were around this season.
Whilst prices are expected to go up, prices are unlikely to increase substantially.
The next winter undoubtedly poses real challenges for an industry that is affected by the events of the credit crunch, weakness of the pound, higher costs of fuel on top of high fixed operating costs for skiing holiday companies.
